


Baby Neal's New Hat

by platonic_boner



Category: White Collar
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Hats, Nobody Actually Dies, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-15 01:11:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5766262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platonic_boner/pseuds/platonic_boner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Baby Neal wears Neal’s hat… and one time he doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby Neal's New Hat

When Baby Neal is two, Elizabeth dresses him up for Halloween in a tiny suit and a fedora. She takes him to Peter’s office and lets him run amok. Diana sends him to steal Jones’ pen, and Jone puts handcuffs on him that he slips his tiny hands out of as soon as Jones turns his back. Baby Neal giggles from under Jones’ desk as they search the office for him, making fake calls to other FBI agents about their missing fugitive.

***

When Baby Neal is ten, Peter and Elizabeth take him on a trip to Europe. Baby Neal has always been precocious and despite warnings to stay close (and Peter threatening to put a leash on him), he wanders off in a market in Italy. It takes his parents about twenty minutes to find him, with a two-minute break in the middle for Peter to call Diana and try to get her to set up a BOLO for a ten-year-old in Italy. When they finally find him, he’s eating gelato and wearing a fedora, and there’s figure slipping away into the crowd.

“Don’t you know not to take food from strangers?” El demands, as Peter tries to follow the figure.

Baby Neal rolls his eyes. “If he’s a stranger, why’s Dad trying to catch him?”

Peter quickly realizes he can’t catch Neal now and turns back to his family. “We _especially_ don’t take food from people Dad’s trying to catch.”

***

A few months later, around Baby Neal’s eleventh birthday, a huge package is delivered to the Burke house. Baby Neal bobs around it excitedly, hoping it’s for him, and Peter eventually decides it’s probably not a bomb and opens it.

It’s a family portrait of the three of them. Baby Neal is wearing a fedora, and the initials NC are painted on the brim.

El insists on hanging it in the living room.

***

In high school, Baby Neal (who, by the way, is starting to get highly annoyed at everyone calling him “Baby Neal” when Neal Caffrey has been “dead” for almost two whole decades) goes on a school trip to Europe. Both his parents try to volunteer to chaperone the trip, but Baby Neal absolutely refuses to let them come. (Probably because he doesn’t want them to call him Baby Neal in front of his classmates.)

He wears the fedora he’s had since he was ten, in case Neal Caffrey doesn’t recognize him anymore, although Baby Neal is pretty sure Caffrey has superpowers that will allow him to find him anywhere.

He’s not disappointed. Neal meets up with him in the Louvre and tips his hat, looking absolutely delighted when Baby Neal clumsily tips his back. Neal pulls him away from the official tour and takes him on a much less official one. Neal’s tour has highlights like an air duct that still has a scuff from Neal’s boot on it, and the initials NC in three different paintings, none of which are officially attributed to Neal.

“Don’t tell Peter,” Neal says, and grins.

****

Baby Neal grows up and does not, despite some fears, become an art thief. (He did consider it, and if his dad disowned him, he’s pretty sure Neal Caffrey would adopt him. But it just seems like a bad idea, even if it has worked out okay for Caffrey.) Instead, he teaches criminology and art history at a tiny college. His favourite course is the one on art forgery, and he sometimes calls Neal on Skype and puts his hat over his face and lets Neal give a “guest lecture” while he sleeps.

***

Baby Neal knows, of course, that no one is immortal. He’s not literally a baby. 

However, it’s hard to hear stories about the man who eluded your father for years on end, who escaped his custody time and time again, who eventually faked his own death and disappeared to Paris to only emerge on his own terms … and then not to think he has superpowers. It’s easy to forget he won’t live forever.

Baby Neal knew Caffrey would never give up the whole thievery thing, and sometimes he’d worry about that, about Neal spending some time in another prison. But that’s not what kills him. 

What kills Neal Caffrey is, ironically, a gun. And also his own stupid heroics.

The Burkes all go to the funeral, which for all they know is the first time Neal has returned to the States since his first death. Neal travelled basically everywhere, but burying him anywhere else would feel wrong: New York was his home.

The funeral isn’t large, but for someone who has supposedly been dead for almost thirty years, it isn’t small either. There’s a French girl sobbing in the back - recipient of the aforementioned stupid heroics. The priest, according to his parents, looks oddly familiar. And a surprising number of FBI agents have showed up to pay their respects.

Baby Neal steps up next to the open casket. His namesake looks to be lying there peacefully, dressed in an incredibly expensive suit. Mozzie has clearly been here already: Neal’s got a teddy bear tucked under one arm, and some very old coins in his palm. He’s still missing something, though.

Baby Neal removes his hat in a very practiced tumble, letting it fall into his outstretched hand. It’s the same one Neal gave him in Italy when he was ten, and it’s still in mint condition. He settles it on Neal’s head. 

_Neal opens both eyes enough to wink._

**Author's Note:**

> they’re holding the funeral somewhere neal couldn’t get into alive. he escapes by skateboarding down a flight of stairs in his coffin, bursting through a window into the lake below, and using his coffin as a boat. he tips his hat at baby neal. the french girl wonders, “est-ce que c’est normale aux etats-unis?” and baby neal sighs, “ce n’est pas la premiere fois qu’il l’a fait” and they go get coffee and eventually get married. Neal comes to the wedding but he doesn’t give the hat back because he’s like sixty and balding so he needs a hat, baby Neal.


End file.
